PasturedWithPride

I would like to use Arduino to track my chickens and when they lay eggs. I thought his would be easier, but I have found that I know a lot more about chickens than I do programming. I got the idea from the RFID Cat Door. http://www.instructables.com/id/RFID-cat-door/

I want to track the chicken when she walks through the ring to a nesting box and then when she walks away. The time she spends in the nesting box should give me a good idea as to whether or not she has laid an egg. I want to record when my hens walk through a door and when they walk back out.

Anyway, I hope that is clear as that is all I have been able to understand. I realize that I know more about chickens than programming. I would rather spend my time with them than on the computer so I am willing to pay for help.

Do you know how to make the chickens scan their RFID tags? RFID readers have very limited read ranges - typically 1 cm or less. Are your chickens smart enough to get there RFID tags held up to the reader to be read?

gookinp07

Is there one door that multiple chickens walk through, or is it one door per chicken? Personally, I would put a sonar sensor over ONE chicken nest. If the distance is large, there's no chicken sitting there. If the distance is small, there IS a chicken sitting there. I'm fairly new to Arduino and I've never used RFID, so that's how I would handle it using what I know. It seems like if there's only one door, you would need an RFID solution that worked 100% of the time or else your Arduino might think that a chicken is inside the coup when it really isn't, causing you to reboot the program or go in and fix it.